Futures Past (25 page)

  
Brett did not know or perhaps did not remember that there would be no wastage of water within the ship. Any excess moisture in the air would be extracted when it went through the process of repurification and automatically returned to the tank.

  
After that one outburst, however, the noises coming from the cargo space diminished to an occasional grunt or rustle of paper. Then suddenly they were all coming into the passenger compartment again; Wallace, still in his wet shorts, holding a damp piece of paper in one hand and grinning all over his face; Brett, radiating truculent confidence and the doctor wearing a carefully neutral expression, each gripping their respective soggy calculations. None of them had the look of men composing themselves to die.

  
Wallace said, "Mr. Herdman, it was stupid of me not to see it at once. We know the capacity of the tank and the air, I mean vapor, pressure within it could be measured. Making allowances for the combined volume of myself and my gear, then introducing a known volume of air via the empty suit and then finding the difference in pressure enables us to calculate . . . Anyway, I know the amount of fuel remaining in the tank. Not exactly, of course, because the pressure gauge wasn't sensitive enough to give absolutely accurate readings, but my findings taken in conjunction with Brett's calculations regarding the weight he will be able to dispose of before deceleration—"

  
"Let me see," said Herdman, reaching for the figures. He studied them carefully for several minutes.

  
"That pressure gauge wasn't sensitive to small variations in pressure," Wallace said hesitantly. "I allowed for a three percent error in either direction. But giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt I think we could just about make it."

  
"A pretty large doubt," said Herdman dryly. "More wish-fulfillment than mathematics."

  
"But it's a chance!" Brett said angrily. "We've got to try it! . . ."

  
Herdman ignored him and turned to face the doctor. He didn't want to commit himself until Forsythe had had his say.

  
When Forsythe began to speak it was quietly and seriously, as if he was discussing a difficult case before arriving at the diagnosis. He began by laying a considerable amount of verbal groundwork to the effect that the food intake of the human body was greatly reduced in weightless conditions and that the amount which was customarily taken, although a greatly reduced quantity, was in excess of what the body actually needed during free fall. It was customary during a long trip to exercise, using spring-loaded equipment of various types, to avoid atrophication of muscles, and if a person was to remain at rest instead of burning up calories in this fashion the food intake could be further reduced....

  
". . . Taking all these factors into consideration," the doctor went on carefully, "and providing we adhere to a very strict regimen, we should be alive when we reach Mars."

  
Wallace's face lit up and Brett growled. "I told you! ..."

  
Herdman said quietly. "I'd like to check your math, Doctor."

  
Forsythe, he saw, had listed the total food available— including some of the medication with food value, glucose and so on, which they were carrying in small quantities— and divided it five ways into the best balanced diet possible under the circumstances. He then calculated the total calories available to each man and stretched them to cover four months. The amount per person was not large.

  
"What about our physical condition when we arrive?" Herdman asked suddenly.

  
"It wouldn't be good," said Forsythe seriously. "Extremely emaciated, severely weakened, impaired sensibilities. Very close to death, in fact."

  
"Would any of us be capable of landing the ship?" said Herdman gently.

  
Forsythe hesitated, then said, "No."

  
Beside him Brett cursed and Wallace looked as though he wanted to. After a few minutes silence they began to talk urgently among themselves, ignoring Herdman as if he was some sort of natural law that they had to find a method of bending to their will—a cold, mechanical presence which didn't really care. Naturally, stupidly, they still refused to give up hope. Again Herdman tried to break it to them gently.

  
He said, "First off I must remind you that I was not trained for this type of ship, that such training is highly specialized and that the chance you would take letting me try to land on Mars is the greatest of the three. Secondly, during the approach and landing a pilot has to be in tiptop condition, have perfect coordination between eye and muscles and generally be , . ." He broke off, shook his head angrily and went on, "If you want me to try to land you on Mars, I will have to have full rations or very nearly full rations, while the rest of you starve to death!"

  
While he talked they had watched him closely and when he stopped they went back to talking among themselves. Herdman kicked himself away from them and toward the cone. He went into the pilot's compartment and closed the trap behind him.

  
Ramsey was awake and although his eyes looked dull he knew and recognized Herdman, but he did not question the other's presence in the holy of holies.

  
"As
 
a well-informed passenger,
 
Herdman,"
 
Ramsey said suddenly, "what do you think of her?" "Nice," said Herdman.

  
- The captain raised his brows, winced and lowered them again. "Is that all?"

  
Herdman said a few more complimentary things about the ship, trying to work the conversation around to their present predicament. But Ramsey was talking as if there were no predicament, as if they were two pilots talking ship. Ramsey might sound coherent, Herdman thought, but he had the feeling that the captain was not quite with him.

  
"Not having been a passenger-ship captain yourself," the pilot went on pleasantly, "I should realize that you weren't programmed for small talk. Not that Ramsey is designed for passenger work only. My reactor can deliver three-quarters G, more in an emergency, which is enough to land or lift off from Mars or any of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter without a chemical assist. And you've seen the lock arrangement—if I set down on any satellite with ice crystals frozen out of its atmosphere, and there are lots of those, I don't have to worry about refueling. Just shovel the stuff into the reactor tank. I think Ramsey, and ships like her, can open up the outer planets. . . ." His voice was still low, but proud, excited. ... "I think we'll be good for five or six years!"

  
"Nearer ten, I'd say," said Herdman. What difference did it make, he thought, whether he told the captain now or a few moments or hours from now? Ramsey was only half conscious, he was having a nice dream and it would be a pity to spoil it.

  
At the words a faint tinge of red seeped into the pale, sweating face as the pilot colored with pleasure at the compliment. A little hesitantly, Ramsey said, "What made you decide to come to Mars, Herdman? The government's not footing the bill, I happen to know. So it must have taken everything you had, and they aren't stingy when they pay us off. That is, if you want to talk about it?"

  
Herdman was silent for a moment, considering that. He had had high hopes of his own, which was very unusual in an obsolete pilot, and now that there was no hope at all he found suddenly that he did want to talk about it. But not to Brett or Wallace or even the doctor, who was the person among the passengers who was most likely to understand how he felt. Passengers, ordinary people, were too soft, too undisciplined, too human. Only another pilot could listen and understand the things he said and the other things which he did not have to say. It was a matter of common background.

  
Awkwardly, Herdman began: "When my ship went obsolete I had the choice of taking the usual ground job in the service, or outside the service or doing nothing at all, comfortably, for the rest of my life, on the pension. I tried all three for a while, but I couldn't plug in anywhere. There always seemed to be too many people around. Illogical people, nasty people, even nice, ordinary people. You know how it is.__"

  
Ramsey would know how it was about the people, being conditioned for the solitude of space from a very early age....

  
Take one twelve-year-old boy, the winner of a series of ruthlessly competitive examinations that have weeded him out from thousands of other twelve-year-olds who likewise had. stars in their eyes. Put him in with a couple of hundred other winners in one of the space academies—all the major countries had one, these days—and do some more weeding out. At the end of five years the number has been cut in half and he has begun to realize what becoming a space captain will entail and, if he accepts what will have to be done to him—no, wants them to do it to him! he goes on for a few more years of weeding out.

  
But even at this stage he is still human. Ha can smoke, date girls, have a few beers—if he wants to.

  
He has come to realize, however, that he is to be an integral part, the very heart and brain, of an extremely beautiful and valuable ship—a ship. A ship which he is being psychologically tailored to fit and which will, if he qualifies, bear his name for as long as they both shall be in service. Naturally, in these circumstances, he does not want to impair his efficiency by continuing to introduce nicotine or alcohol into his system, or fog his thought processes with emotional entanglements.

  
To some people this would appear to be a harsh, almost monastic existence. But there is great happiness to be derived from doing what one wants to do, especially if it is a struggle all the way and one wants to do it very much. By this time he is one of twenty or thirty very special individuals. Already a ship is being built for him and all over the world people are beginning to know his name.

  
Because the space captains are the world's heroes. Regardless of nationality everyone knows their names, faces, backgrounds, habits. And almost as well known and respected are the obsolete captains and those who are in the final stages of training.

  
The final stages. ...

  
Control and guidance systems are such that a ship can be tossed accurately away from Earth on a course which will place it close enough to any chosen destination for the ship's own computer to take over. The ship's computer or captain is a small, delicate but highly dependable fabrication of flesh and blood, which has proved to be much more efficient as well as hundreds of times lighter in weight than any purely electronic counterpart. It has been trained to think and act with lightning speed, to think of controls and mechanisms of the ship as if they were part of itself and generally to be a smoothly functioning part of a machine designed for travel in space. Which also means that it has been conditioned to withstand loneliness and, what is even worse in a thinking, self-aware machine saddled with that indefinable something called a soul, to live and get along with for extended periods the not very pleasant person which is itself. So close is the relationship which has been fostered between captain and ship, both physically and emotionally, that it has been likened to marriage....

  
But when a ship became obsolete, when the design was replaced by something newer, safer, more sophisticated, so did its captain.

  
Despite the fantastic generosity of their severance pay and pension, none of the retired captains were happy men. Some of them worked very hard or played very hard or drank very hard, and others did things which, had they not been heroes, would have landed them in jail. And some of them—no, one of them—was stupid enough to want to try doing it all over again.....

  
". . . Anyhow," Herdman went on, "I got wind of this project—strictly experimental and non-government sponsored—one of the development companies was starting on Mars. They had the idea of recommissioning Wilkinson. ..."

  
George Wilkinson had been a classmate of Herdman's, which meant that their ships were of a similar basic design. To the similarity between ships was added that of the men. They had been friends, they'd shared much the same views on things and, what was perhaps more important in this case, they were physically alike in vision, reach and reaction time. When George had gone obsolete along with Herdman and the others of their class his ship had been on Mars, and there had been no point in bringing an obsolete ship back to Earth. George had died shortly afterward—a malfunction of his breathing equipment while out walking, it was said—and the Wilkinson had stood for five years before someone began getting ideas about it.